Aethiopica 22 (2019) International Journal of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies
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MARVIN BEACHY, SIL Ethiopia
Review
GRAZIANO SAVÀ and MAURO TOSCO, An Annotated Edition of Father G. Toselli’s Dizi Grammar
Aethiopica 22 (2019), 303–305 ISSN: 1430•1938 ______
Edited in the Asien•Afrika•Institut Hiob•Ludolf•Zentrum für Äthiopistik der Universität Hamburg Abteilung für Afrikanistik und Äthiopistik
by Alessandro Bausi in cooperation with Bairu Tafla, Ludwig Gerhardt, Hilke Meyer-Bahlburg, and Siegbert Uhlig Reviews
GRAZIANO SAVÀ and MAURO TOSCO, An Annotated Edition of Fa- ther G. Toselli’s Dizi Grammar, Cushitic and Omotic Studies, 5 (Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2016). viii, 185 pp. Price: €49.80. ISBN: 978-3-89645-490-4.
Dizin, also called Dizi, is an Omotic language in south-western Ethiopia, most closely related to Sheko and Nayi. Since we know of no written de- scriptions of Dizin before those of four Italian missionaries in the 1930s, this annotated version of some of their writings is a valuable addition to the literature. Questions remain about the internal relationships of the Omotic languages, so having data from eighty years ago provides clues that will support current proposals, or possibly spawn new ones. This book has three parts. In Part 1, Savà first tells about Catholic mis- sions in Ethiopia, some historical background that explains what led one of their missionaries, Toselli, to describe Dizin (pp. 3–19). On pages 19–51, Savà and Tosco describe Dizin in their own words, based on what they learnt from Toselli’s grammar and other descriptions of the language since then. Part 2 (pp. 53–157) is a photographic reproduction of Toselli’s Dizin grammar and dictionary, along with Savà and Tosco’s footnotes that trans- late some of the Italian into English, and provide other insights that readers might miss. The dictionary part (pp. 135–157) is especially valuable since it provides the English equivalents of all the entries at the bottom of each page. In Part 3 (pp. 159–182) Savà introduces the readers to works on Dizin by three other Consolata missionaries: Giuseppe Goletto, Colomba Banal, and Giovanni Chiomio. He includes photographic reproductions of some of their pages, but not the kinds of footnotes that Part 2 has. References for all three parts are on pages 183–185. Some of the most interesting data presented in the book will be addressed here. Savà says, ‘Toselli’s account of plural formation is based on a suffix that is unattested in other descriptions’ (p. 36). The morpheme that Toselli probably mistakenly described as the plural marker, -el (p. 66), is now un- derstood to be a separate word (el or hel) which means ‘all’. Toselli’s ‘negative prefix’ tan- (p. 48) corresponds with today’s /taːn/ and /naːn/. The latter is the most common one now, but the former is still wide- ly used. A historical change seems evident in that Toselli saw -en and -hen as the suffixes that marked nouns as feminine (p. 65). There does not seem to be any current use of that -hen suffix, but -en and -eni are well attested.
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On page 68, in Toselli’s data, three single digit numbers are different enough to be of historical interest, so they are shown in the following table. Interestingly, recent data from Nayi and Sheko are both closer to today’s Dizin than Toselli’s Dizin data.1
Table 1 Comparison of three single digit numbers in today’s Dizin, Toselli’s Dizin, ayi, and Sheko
Today’s Today’s Toselli’s Gloss Dizin Dizin ayi Sheko Dizin Data Phonetic Orthographic ‘two’ thag [t’àːgˌŋˉ ] xaagŋ t’àːgn t’āāg ‘four’ kum [k b ˌ ] kubm kubḿ kūb ‘nine’ sagani, [sāgǹˌ] sagn ságn sagǹ sagheni
The infinitive marker presented on pages 79–82, -k, does not seem to be used today. Instead -kŋ or -ŋ or -dn are used. On page 32, Savà says that Toselli’s only comment about [h] ‘is that it can be more or less aspirated.’ Though the dictionary entries do not seem to include any ‘voiced h’, this statement hints at either Toselli or his language sources detecting a distinction between two kinds of h that is now under- stood to be a voicing difference (/h/ versus /ɦ/), which is recognized in the recently developed orthography. So, for the consonant chart on page 34 to be complete and current, a row is now needed for a voiced, glottal fricative: /ɦ/. The orthographic representation is
1 Cf. Ak lilu Yilma, Sociolinguistic Survey Report of the Nayi Language of Ethiopia ,T : SIL International, 2001), 13; A.-C. Hellenthal, A grammar of Sheko (Utrecht: LOT, 2010), 221. 2 M. Beachy, A Brief Grammar of Dizin, 2nd edn (Mizan Teferi: Bench Maji Zone–SIL Ethiopia, 2018), 7. 3 Dontes Baykes and Mekonnen Eyarz, Inglizin–Diizin–Goln xsaftnki tmrt ipmki dikishinǝry. English–Diizin–Amharic School Dictionary, trial edn (n.p.: SNNPR
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for /p/ because of regularly used borrowed words like posta (‘en- velope’), papay (‘papaya’), and so on.5 In a number of helpful footnotes (e.g. on p. 72) typing errors in Toselli’s book are mentioned, with corrections. In the same spirit, some of the poten- tially most consequential mistakes in the volume being reviewed are cor- rected here. On page 4 ‘1682–1506’ was meant to read ‘1682–1706’. On page 5 ‘1949’ was meant to read ‘1849’. On page 6 ‘2001’ should be ‘1901’. In the middle of Table 9, on page 46, the ‘1Pl’ morpheme should be ‘ʔŋ³-’ (high tone), not ‘ʔŋ²-’ (mid tone). On page 108, the last word on the page should be ‘sweep’, not ‘weep’. The current Dizin word for ‘month’ is [ʔat͡sɨm]. Page 156 shows that Toselli listed it as ‘tsm’. Sheko has [ʔʲat͡s’ɨn], ‘month’,6 which adds credibility to the theory that Toselli’s typist inadvertently missed an initial ‘a’. The ‘amu’ at the bottom of page 145 should be ‘Tamu’. In conclusion, Savà and Tosco have done a big favour for the community that studies Omotic languages by making the work that Toselli and other Italians did in the twentieth century more accessible. Anyone who wants to know more about the history of Dizin, or the question of how Omotic languages should be classified, should get this book, read it carefully, and compare what it presents with related languages. Marvin Beachy, SIL Ethiopia Education Bureau, Bench Maji Zone Educational Department–SIL Ethiopia, 2015), 140. 4 Ibid., 130. 5 Ibid., 66, 133. 6 A.-C. Hellenthal, op. cit., 506. 305 Aethiopica 22 (2019)